Prison parole officers concerned about public safety after title change

Parole officers represented by the Public Employees Federation are unhappy with a new policy that changed the title of prison facility parole officers to offender rehabilitation coordinator and removed their status as peace officers. The roughly 135 state employees (between 13 percent and 14 percent of all parole officers) are being combined into a new job title with facility correction counselors. Both are now called offender rehabilitation coordinators.

The state Department of Civil Service approved combining the job titles weeks ago, and the changes took effect yesterday, said Peter Cutler, a Department of Corrections and Community Supervision spokesman. Combining the positions “will make for a far more effective process for administering to the needs of inmates prepping for re-entry,” he said. The employees in the two jobs had been doing “similar but not always overlapping functions,” he added.

The Division of Parole and the Department of Correctional Services into the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision a year ago.

An email to the members of the news media from an address claiming to represent New York parole officers said the changes are cause for alarm because the peace officers “have now been rebranded and stripped of their peace officer status—and their sidearms and body armor.”

“The merger was driven under the guise of fiscal savings, but at the expense of public safety. Parole functions were once managed under the umbrella of DOCS control, until the Attica riot of 1971. The lessons learned from that riot taught us inmates need to see a clear line between who houses them and who decides when they get released. Those lines are again blurred by this merger,” the email said.

The email said the facility parole officers served as law enforcement and handled confidential victim materials; correction counselors guide inmates through the process of rehabilitation.

Stripping the formerly called facility parole officers of their peace-officer status takes away from their authority, union members believe, said Sherry Halbrook, a spokeswoman for the Public Employees Federation, which represents the workers. ”There’s no question that our members at what used to be the Division of Parole are upset. They have good reason to be,” she said.

John Walters, a field parole officer in the Syracuse region, said he is concerned about the changes. Facility parole officers have provided an “in-depth voice” that filters information to the Board of Parole. A new risk-assessment tool is being used to provide those recommendations, with information from inmates that could help them get less strict parole, he said.

The commissioner has control over the information, which Walters said he believes will allow the commissioner to control the Board of Parole.

“It’s not about the guns and it’s not about the badges and the handcuffs and the body armor,” he said.

The union has appealed the decision of the Department of Civil Service, Walters said.

Cutler said Walters’ comment about the controlling the Parole Board “is completely without merit.”

Assembly Correction Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, recommended in a letter to the DOCCS supervisor last month that the 136 facility parole officers be transferred to the Parole Board budget and remain there until they leave for another job or retire. The job reclassification doesn’t save money or make the community safer, he wrote.

Cutler said the agency never said the merger of the two titles had anything to do with fiscal savings. Rather, it had to do with creating more efficiency of operations, he said.

There are 872 other parole officers who work in the field, not in prisons, Cutler said. Their titles, duties and peace-officer status are not being changed. Peace officers have shields and are authorized to carry a firearm and wear body armor. But firearms are not permitted in prison, so peace officers couldn’t carry weapons inside facilities, he said.

Of the 136 facility parole officers who had their titles changed, 26 had obtained personal firearms by dint of having a shield, Cutler said. Without their shields now, they will have to give up those firearms. About half of the 136 employees have indicated they would like to transfer to the field. For the next four years, any of those workers who do that will not have to go through academy training, he said.